Providing health care in the most cost-effective way has become a priority in recent years. This book tackles the important issue of the potential conflict between economic expediency and the welfare of individual patients. Contributors examine different attitudes to this complex problem, along with a variety of legal and historical perspectives. The book addresses particular aspects of health care, such as medical expert systems, general practice, medical education, and clinical decision-making where the direct involvement of doctors in allocating scarce and expensive resources is perhaps most obvious.